When we mourn the loss of Whitney Houston, we don’t mourn the loss of talent,
because the talent was already gone.

We mourn the terrible trajectory of modern fame, that takes so many bright, joyous talents and destroys them, fixing them in an all consuming glare that magnifies weakenesses, exploits ego and attacks vulnerability. As fans and critics, observers and participants, we surely have to ask ourselves why the lives of so many of popular music’s most exceptional and life affirming artists end in tragedy.

Even if Whitney Houston’s death at 48 should prove unrelated to the controversies that blighted her career, her battles with drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships and depression, the image that remains of her is of a kind of eclipse, a shining star thrown into darkness.

At 22, when she arrived on the world’s stage, she seemed like a pure breeze of natural talent, a sweet, friendly girl with a gorgeous smile and a voice full of possibilities. The juxtaposition that made her an instant superstar was this peculiar combination of girl-next-door freshness and supreme talent. She could glide along a groove like liquid honey and take off into the ether with the pyrotechnical bravura of an aural firework display. She was raised in music, daughter of a gospel singer (Cissy Houston), cousin of a soul star (Dionne Warwick), goddaughter of a legend (Aretha Franklin).

But somehow, she didn’t come across as prima donna royalty. In that first accelerated step into multi-million selling superfame, she had the bashful grace of a fairytale princess, a church raised ingénue singing her heart out for the love of it. Whether or not it was always an act, Houston personified a kind of youthful purity with bravura ability.

She played with that innocent image in her world-beating movie debut in the Bodyguard, which portrayed her as a sharp tongued diva, before revealing the vulnerability beneath, as she fell for the love of a good man. The reality turned out to be sadder and more twisted, a poisonous relationship with bad boy Bobby Brown exposing cracks in her image. Houston’s fall from grace has been well chronicled but no less shocking for that, when she went from soul sweetheart to gaunt, confused, drug-addled diva, who famously declared “crack is wack”.

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She made some entertaining films and catchy pop records in the second decade of her career, but, really, she was a promise unfulfilled. Much of Houston’s music was over-produced, smoothly commercial concoctions that played strictly by-the-numbers. For all the raw edges in her life, it turned out she didn’t really have the direct emotional musical expression of a true soul great.

Her attempted comeback in 2009 was almost inevitably disappointing, years of self-destructive behaviour having extracted a toll on her voice. Live shows were erratic. Meetings with the media displayed an eccentric mixture of denial and defiance, so that it was hard not to escape the impression that this was a woman out of balance with herself, and out of touch with reality.

But lord, in her time and in her prime, could she sing up a storm. I have always been a sucker for a power ballad, those big, emotional, slightly melodramatic pop songs that go for the heart and the tear ducts, building to a blockbuster climax of pop operatics. And Houston was queen of the form. For some tastes, it’s an excessive style of singing, that evokes a kind of overwrought insincerity. But surrender to the big notes at the end of I Will Always Love You and you will hear something else. There is a kind of exultancy, a sense of daring and freedom as the singer takes flight just to see where her voice can take her, lifting heavenwards. It is a dazzling escape into pure talent, the sound of a person breaking free from limitations. That is how we should remember her.